The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

105 of 109 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 starsThe Fault in Our Stars
Let me start out by saying that this book ripped my heart from my chest, crumpled it and then proceeded to throw it on the ground and trample on it in the most beautiful way imaginable.I was slightly hesitant going into this book as I don't read many contemporary novels, and it was so hyped up by both friends and reviews I've read/seen about it that I was sure I was...

3.0 out of 5 starsMixed feelings
Hazel was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer at the age of thirteen. Three years later the disease is being kept at bay indefinitely thanks to an experimental new drug. Her days are spent carting her oxygen tank between college, home, and Cancer Kid Support Group. Her treatment regime means that she has little time for friends her own age, and besides, now that...

Let me start out by saying that this book ripped my heart from my chest, crumpled it and then proceeded to throw it on the ground and trample on it in the most beautiful way imaginable.I was slightly hesitant going into this book as I don't read many contemporary novels, and it was so hyped up by both friends and reviews I've read/seen about it that I was sure I was in for some major disappointment.I couldn't have been more wrong. John Green's writing is something I rarely find, the kind where I never stumble over a word in mid-sentence because it flows so perfectly. The story itself was just phenomenal. I fell in love with the characters, I laughed at the dark humor, I cried continuously for a good five or six chapters and no word of a lie I have never cried at a book before (I tend to have somewhat of an ice heart).Please, please do not be put off by the hype this book has received, it truly is warranted, and even if, like me, you don't tend to read much contemporary give it a go. This is one of those books that I feel pretty much most people could find enjoyment in. I already have a list of friends and family members that I will be loaning this book to because in my humble opinion everyone needs to experience the flawlessness that is The Fault in Our Stars. A.

A copy of ‘The Fault in our Stars’ by John Green was given to me to read by my fourteen year old granddaughter who had seen the film, read the book and was truly captivated. She is not an avid reader and I am grateful to the author for producing a novel that captured her attention and I hope this will be the start of a long ‘love affair’ with the written word.

‘The Fault in Our Stars’ had been on my reading list for some time. Initially recommended by Richard & Judy Book Club and was the ‘Spring 2013 Book Club Winner.’

It has been almost thirty years since I spent Friday evenings with my two daughters watching ‘weepy videos’ whilst eating crisps and ice cream. I must admit since then I steer clear of them, finding them too slushy, sentimental and predictable.

Predominately a Young Adult writer, John Green has written a story that deftly crosses all generations.I was initially hesitant about reading this book having recently failed to complete a novel about teenagers, believing that at sixty two, I was ‘over the hill’ to appreciate a story involving young girls with a youthful outlook and mannerisms.How wrong I was!!! ‘A Fault in Our Stars’ quickly became compulsive reading.

Hazel Grace has terminal cancer. When her mother insists she needs to ‘get out of the house and mix with people’ Hazel attends a Cancer Kid Support Group. There she meets Augustus Waters and they fall in love.

Theirs is a poignant love story, it is sad and may make you cry at times however it must be said that it is also touching, funny, uplifting, life affirming and will make you question your own beliefs regarding terminal illness and death, loss and grief.

Although you virtually know the end from the start – this is not a depressing story.It is about terminal illness and its’ affects on the victims and those closest to them.‘A Fault in Our Stars’ is a well written, quick, easy read, packed with dark humour.

This is a story suitable for all ages, even if you are ‘not into’ weepy tales, this will surely touch your heart.

Sometimes one needs to read outside their favoured genre/comfort zone to enable a truly unique experience.

On exploring the reviews there appears to be a relatively large amount of young adults who loved this book and anything that encourages young people to embrace the ‘written word’ has a ‘thumbs up’ from me.

I have to admit, even though I'd heard this book was really good, the thought of a young adult novel about teenagers with cancer didn't hugely appeal to me. My initial reactions were also somewhat less than stellar - everyone talks in a razor-sharp, ultra witty way that feels straight out of an Aaron Sorkin or Diablo Cody movie and not even remotely how any 16 or 17 year old I know speaks. I feared that it was going to be all style without substance, bouncing along until a requisite tearjearking conclusion.

I was wrong.

This is a book peopled with a group of characters that you really care about. At its core are the star-crossed lovers, Hazel (with terminal cancer) and Augustus (a cancer survivor). They meet at a cancer support group and become close, despite Hazel's desire to avoid becoming a "grenade" in anybody's life - by which she means someone who will unwittingly cause significant hurt through their passing. They are fantastically loveable characters, who flit between deep conversations about the meaning of life and finding refuge in video games and reality TV shows. I loved them both. Still do.

But the book is more than that. It's about coming to terms with the fact that your life will almost certainly never rise above insignificance - yes, you will matter to your family and friends, hey maybe even write a few reviews that people like on Amazon, but ultimately you probably won't make any life changing impact on the world. It's about the way we shrink from people with terminal disease only to laud them when they pass. It's about the impact that terminal diseases have on the families of those left behind. It's about teenagers growing up and learning to take responsibility for their own lives, defining themselves by who they are not what disease they may have.

I don't know if there's anything life changing here, but it's definitely a moving, entertaining and thought provoking book. Pretty hard combination to pull off. Kudos to John Green.

This is the first John Green book I've had the pleasure of reading, and if the rest are ever half as good as this one I'm going to be in heaven. About 5 years ago an ex of mine recommended me Looking for Alaska . I never got around to reading it while we were together and when we split I tried to avoid everything that reminded me of them as much as possible. I wish I hadn't. This book has had me laughing, crying and begging to know what happened next. I had it for a few days on my Kindle and when I was looking for something new to read I thought I would give it a shot, well my Kindle hardly left my hand that day haha.

The book is based on real situations, heartbreaking situations but real. And yet John Green still has the power to put humour in there, young love and adventure. Even though Hazel & Augustus are both riddled with cancer some how they never let it beat them. They don't cut themselves of from the world just waiting to die and expecting people to feel sorry for them, they just in a way get on with it.

This book is wonderful. Just wonderful, and as a first John Green book for me I've got to say, I've caught the bug haha. His ability to attach you to his characters is something I haven't seen in a long time. They are intelligent, inspirational and insightful. Not only are the main characters well written and thought out but any of the characters that pop in and out of the book also , along with Hazel & Gus, will pop in and out of your heart.

In all honesty, I'm not sure what to say about this book that hasn't already been said. There isn't much I can say because everyone will feel something different while reading it. So I'll leave you with something Hazel said instead, in hope that it will show you why myself like so many others find it hard to say anything other than "perfection" about this book :).

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books…which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”

This is the third John Green novel I’ve read, and it’s definitely my favourite. As a character, Hazel captivated me from the start. She’s been terminally ill for several years, so her attitude towards life is intriguing, insightful and believable. Augustus didn’t resonate with me quite so much. He’s a little less believable – perhaps a bit overly extrovert. Nevertheless, I still understood why Hazel was so drawn to him.

The Fault in Our Stars is a quick read; I finished it within a day or two. That’s thanks to its addictive storyline and John Green’s smooth writing style that lets you forget the words and see the world beyond them instead. The direction of storyline isn’t as straight forward as I thought it would be when I first began reading, and I loved that about it. I did figure it out quite early on, but it didn’t matter.

Strangely, considering how much of an emotional wreck I can be, I didn’t actually cry while reading The Fault in Our Stars, which is a bit disappointing. I felt utterly sad, of course, but the lack of real tears tells me that my connection with the characters and their lives was not quite strong enough. I would have liked to have been pulled just a little further into the story, and I think that it was my faltering belief in Augustus that stopped me. I would have benefitted from a better understanding of Augustus, I think, but I just couldn’t quite get to grips with his personality.

That said, I’d recommend The Fault in Our Stars to everyone. It reminds you how precious life is, and how lucky we are to be healthy. It reminds you to take every opportunity you get, and I love that about it. I’m sure The Fault in Our Stars will stay with me for a long time, and I’d be tempted to revisit it again in the future if I feel like I’m forgetting.

Hazel was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer at the age of thirteen. Three years later the disease is being kept at bay indefinitely thanks to an experimental new drug. Her days are spent carting her oxygen tank between college, home, and Cancer Kid Support Group. Her treatment regime means that she has little time for friends her own age, and besides, now that she's a Cancer Kid most of them don't know how to behave around her anyway. So she is intrigued to say the least when an attractive and witty young man named Augustus Waters turns up unexpectedly at support group one week.

The predominant niggle that stopped me from really losing myself in this book is that Hazel and Gus just don't come across as realistic teenagers at all. They both have this incredibly verbose, Dawson's Creek-esque way of speaking that is laden with cheesy metaphors. The whole thing is narrated by Hazel, and the insight that that gives into her thought processes and inner dialogue makes her just about relatable, but Augustus feels like he's reading from a script the whole time. I had this sense that for every frank exchange of emotions between them, they had spent five minutes flipping through a thesaurus beforehand. I found this really annoying to the point that it prevented me from becoming emotionally invested with either of the characters.

What it does really well is illustrates how immensely trying it must be to be a sick teenager, be it with cancer or any chronic disease. I believe John Green drew on his experiences of working as a chaplain at a childrens' hospital to write the novel, and he has certainly made plenty of astute and unsentimental observations about the realities of living with illness. At just the age when you should be finding your independence and forging a groove for yourself in the world, you are forced to rely more heavily on the adults around you than ever. A 16-year-old in the UK is legally allowed to get married or join the army but when it comes to making decisions about their own healthcare the law is complex. They can give consent to medical care but if they want to refuse a particular treatment their wishes can be overridden by their parents or doctors. It's no wonder that Hazel talks about herself and her fellow Cancer Kids as feeling experimented on. And she's got the extra burden of guilt of knowing that her parents have to forgo treats and holidays because of the costs of her medication and care.

The tragic relationship between Hazel and Augustus is what this book is all about - there's a slightly strange side-story about taking a trip to Amsterdam to meet Hazel's favourite author, but other than that there is not much plot to speak of. It's for that reason that I think so much of a reader's enjoyment of this novel will depend on their own personal world view and experiences of cancer, illness, and losing loved ones. The subject matter is so emotive that it's bound to provoke an almost visceral response that runs much deeper than any assessment of the words on the page. It wasn't for me, but you can't argue with the widespread acclaim it has received that shows it has tugged on the heart-strings of many.

When one’s transplant nurse recommends a book with a joke about her own profession (see below), one seriously thinks about reading that book. But then, upon looking up that book on Amazon UK, and finding that the blurb says

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

… one has one’s doubts. I read plenty of romance novels, but they’re all historical, and I have been known to be quite vocal about my intense dislike of Romeo and Juliet and Twilight-ish teen romances. In short, I HATE THEM. But enough about that and on to this book.

Going by my gut feeling that CNS Wood could not possibly have told me that I would like such wimpy rubbish as the blurb implied The Fault in Our Stars would be, I went ahead and downloaded a sample chapter (thank goodness for the Kindle app). And found that it started pretty well. So I bought the ebook. And then found the section which spawned her humour.

The nurse left. “Is she gone?”I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me nod. “Yeah,” I said.“I’ll see? Really? Did she seriously say that?”“Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go,” I said.“1. Doesn’t pun on your disability,” Isaac said.“2. Gets blood on the first try,” I said.“Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice.”“How are you doing, sweetie?” I asked, cloying.“I’m going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie.”“Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?” he answered. And then after a second, “Most of them are good, actually. I just want the hell out of this place.”

Now I like her even more than I did before, and am so very glad that she does not talk to me like that! And it is also true that you say ‘thank you’ a lot in hospital, and I think we’re called patients because you do need a heck of a lot of patience…. there is an insane amount of waiting involved – waiting for diagnoses, treatments, tests and results, operations; and waiting, sometimes in vain, to get better.

So, as the blurb says, Hazel is a teen with terminal cancer (yes, there are characters that die in the book but not too predictably – it is a book about someone with terminal cancer after all, which is rather unforgiving). She goes to Cancer Support Group, and meets Gus, they hit it off, and then proceed to have a rather predictable romance.

This is alleviated, firstly, by the fact that both of them are rather erudite, and by virtue of their having been ill so young, are far more mature than the average teen; secondly, that Hazel’s love for the (fictional) book An Imperial Affliction and her need to know what happened after causes most of the book’s action. I won’t reveal more than this as that would be way too many spoilers and this is too good a book for that.

For me, hitting, as the story does, so close to home with my own chronic and incurable illness, many of the book’s romantic themes struck fewer emotional responses than the truths told about being an ailing person – its effects on friends and family, its connotations for the rest of your life, and how you become ‘that person who has xyz’, rather than who you really are, or even who you were before you were ill.

Life before, and life after.

All conversations begin with ‘you’re looking good, so how are you doing’ instead of just ‘hi’. And even though you know it’s meant as an expression that they care, sometimes it is rather depressing to know that the first thing someone thinks about when they see you used to be YOU and now it’s the ailment, and that you have to talk about it in every conversation – but at the same time, weirdly, if they don’t ask you feel like somethings’ missing! But there are of course those gems of people who ask, genuinely listen to the (very short) reply, and then move on to other things – perfection.

Family members are truly the hardest hit, and for parents to see their child go through so much pain and to know that there is no hope for survival in the long term, Hazel’s

I went to Support Group for the same reason that I’d once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. There is only one thing in this world s***tier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer. {…} Most of the time, I could forget about it, but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around, but I was the alpha and the omega of my parents’ suffering.

… is so evocative of things that you feel when you are at your worst…

People talk about the courage of cancer patients, and I do not deny that courage. I had been poked and stabbed and poisoned for years, and still I trod on. But make no mistake: In that moment, I would have been very, very happy to die.

…. which you never ever say to any of the people around you, and the things that people say to you …

“This is just a thing, Hazel,” my mom said. “It’s a thing we can live with.”

… upon which you then really wonder whether it is or whether it would be better to just stop. But then this happens …

My hair looked like a bird’s nest; my shuffling gait like a dementia patient’s. I felt a little better each day, though: Each sleep ended to reveal a person who seemed a bit more like me.

… and you think, okay, maybe just a bit longer. Until the next time …

I went into the bathroom, took my first shower in a week, got dressed, and when I got out, I was so tired I had to lie down and get my breath.

…. the vicious cycle just goes on never-endingly.

One parent invariably takes the burden of finding out everything there is to know, ferrying you between home and hospital and doing everything and anything; between the two of you, you pretty much know almost as much as the doctors. My father and I are encyclopaedic in our knowledge of my CKD though it has its negative effects on my overactive imaginaton, as Hazel expresses so well.

My shoulder hurt. I worried the cancer had spread from my lungs. I imagined the tumor metastasizing into my own bones, boring holes into my skeleton, a slithering eel of insidious intent.

And then other characters in the book deal with their own worries, and bring to the reader’s mind other concerns than family and carers.

What happens to you and your own self-esteem when your romantic partner tells you that they want to break up before you get worse because they can’t handle it. You can, so why can’t they, you think… it’s often far more difficult for those around the chronically and terminally ill to deal with the illness than the patient themselves. They are alive and want to live their lives free of guilt and illness. And, as Green says via his characters, illness and disability repulses – not just physically, but emotionally.

I recently watched Rachel Stevenson’s In Sickness and In Health, about her journey through donating a kidney to her husband. She begins with an admission that what she did was selfish. Throughout the film she repeats one thing – she want their life to go back to ‘normal’, to what she envisioned their life as a couple being.

‘I want my life back – I want our life back’.

Her spare kidney might not bring back normality. And her husband’s reaction is also something to think about – how do you deal with taking a vital organ from your wife, when you know that your brother’s has already failed within you. It was natural for me to accept my father’s because I would have done the same for him, but my constant fear is that his kidney that’s given me back a semi-normal life will fail or that my body will reject it, and I will have wasted his loving gesture.

The Fault in Our Stars expresses also Hazel’s wish not to affect the lives of those around her too much, because she is a ‘time-bomb’ that may go off at any time, leaving devastation in her wake. Gus, however, is of the persuasion that you should take love and life when you can get it, live to the fullest extent, however little that may be, and enjoy it while you can.

As Stevenson says in her film,

We expect so much from the big moments in life, but it’s been the small things that have turned out to be the most important.

Read this book. Enjoy the romance. But look below the surface. Apply the lessons it teaches to your own life. You may not be ill. You may not be short on time. But enjoy life anyway. Treasure each happy moment – you’ll realise they were special later on. Do what you want to do sooner rather than later. You never know what’s around the corner.

And as a friend (or someone) said, when life throws you a curve ball, just pause, yell ‘PLOT TWIST!’ and carry on.

PS. I just found out that the book is apparently being released as a film sometime in 2014. I watched the trailer, and am not pleased with their interpretation… seems to have turned into the standard Romeo and Juliet pap. Ah well, trailers are sometimes deceptive. We shall see if the depth of the book translated well. Hope it’s not like Ender’s Game, one of my all-time favourite books. Which I should also review at some point.

My main concern regarding The Fault in Our Stars was that it would not – or perhaps could not – live up to the myriad of glowing reviews streaming from pretty much every kind of media at the moment. When a book elicits over three thousand five star Amazon reviews, one’s initial expectations are set just a little bit high; my cynicism radar, however, was coolly informing me that I was unlikely to experience the somewhat clichéd and melodramatic revelations that so many reviews have promised. I didn’t think that I would Laugh and Cry and then Laugh Some More, or Be Profoundly Affected, or even Have My Mind Opened – namely because this is a New York Times bestseller we’re talking about, not an encounter with a religious deity or a trip to space.

Having now finished the book, I’m not ashamed to admit that some of my preconceptions were very wrong, although this is namely because my core ones were probably right. The premise of TFIOS has been run through so many times in other reviews that I won’t say much about the storyline here; it should suffice to say that the narrative follows Hazel, our endearingly honest 16-year-old narrator who also happens to have cancer, after she meets the implausibly named Augustus Waters at Cancer Support Group. The book itself is generally not, contrary to what I had expected, clichéd or particularly unoriginal; indeed, Green seems acutely aware of the ‘conventions of the cancer kid genre’, seeking to slalom around them and redefine the genre so as to make it more believable and true to the often less polarised realities of cancer.

Green crafts, through Hazel’s narrative voice, a gritty and frank narrative without being depressing or disinteresting, and he tackles this tricky balance admirably well. My main reservation is that, in attempting to be different and original, Green sometimes swerves too far from the conventional and ends up careering into the realms of either the entirely implausible or the (perhaps worse) trying-too-hard-to-be-quirky. I did, for instance, find certain aspects of Augustus Waters unconvincing and irritating, namely his stilted ‘kooky’ dialogue style – e.g. “’Hazel and I are going to watch V for Vendetta for she can see her filmic doppelganger, mid-two thousands Natalie Portman’” – which might have been endearing if it wasn’t such a frequent occurrence. In trying so hard to make Augustus different, Green ends up inadvertently creating precisely what he was presumably attempting to avoid; an artificial character nearly as difficult for the reader to believe (and thus attach to) as the implausibly stoic and two-dimensional cancer kids inhabiting the more clichéd realms of the genre.

I’d encourage those with a penchant for light-hearted and optimistic reads to give TFIOS a go; there’s very little to lose – the book is easy to read and not a huge time investment, and whilst I personally wouldn’t say that it’s a life changer, it’s certainly satisfying and entertaining. Overall, Green takes a big step towards refining a difficult and often frustratingly unoriginal genre – and for that, he is to be commended.

You think you've read/seen it all before - two precocious teenagers with cancer falling in love sounds a bit too familiar ("My Sister's Keeper", "Now Is Good"), but the latest book by John Green (and somewhat typical of him) still stands out.

Now that I read it, finally, after hype about it died out (on holidays, in one morning, shedding silent tears in the end), I think "The Fault In Our Stars" is very worth reading. You will appreciate discovering for yourself the witty and loveable and beautifully drawn characters who you will love and deeply care about. I did, anyway.

"The Fault In Our Stars" is the novel about acceptance, about significance of life and love and connection between people, the importance of family, full of characters whose personalities shine through the pages and reach out to you (a word of warning: perhaps it will take you some time to fall in love with them, but you will!).

And it is not just a cancer book. It's a great love story with the beginning, the full on romance and the climax.

The book snaps, every page is full of electrifying dialogue which might feel occasionally a bit childish (okay, young adult), but is really enjoyable barter nonetheless. The dialogues change from being simple and funny to the full on contemplation of life.And these somewhat unreal dialogues for 16 years old (e.g. when Gus declares his love to Hazel) bothered me a bit. All the witty dialogues (and the paragraph-length monologues!), all the philosophising, however enjoyable, are not what you would expect of teenagers...

But who cares? John Green makes you laugh in the most wonderful way, in rather unexpected places of the narrative. The other thing I'm prepared to overlook is the whole Peter Van Houten obsession, although the book he wrote sounds really good, with the superb twist in the ending. "The Fault In Our Stars" has its own twist, of course, which you kinda have to expect. The book is not perfect. The plot and the inevitable twist are both a bit predictable. In any case, despite my minor disagreements with the style of writing, I found this book a good and heartfelt love story (it's not a simple coming of age book). And not only for young adults. If you are a sucker for romance (and I mean it good-heartedly) - read it! I am sure it won't leave you disappointed, teary-eyed, maybe, but also somewhat elated and thoughtful and thankful of all the good things you have in life.

“The Fault in Our Stars” written by John Green is a novel that will make you smile to tears and sadden you, a story that strikes right at the heart where it will remain long after you close its covers.

The novel main character, girl named Hazel is sixteen years old, suffers from a malignant tumor and very short life remains in front of her. And after a medical miracle happens Hazel will get the chance to live longer than anyone had hoped, a few years that will give her a chance to feel at least a little bit of teenage life.

Hazel will start going to meetings of Cancer Kid Support Group to meet kids who share the same problems and fears, in order to more easily accept the difficult and inevitable destiny before her.

There she will meet Augustus, guy a year older than her, who defeated a sinister disease, but lost his leg. And although Hazel did not want that to happen because she is afraid that due to this she will suffer even more, the two of them will gradually become closer, first as best friends, and then a step further.

Even though before her is battle that she has no chance of winning, Hazel will for the first time in her life feel immense happiness, will feel what it means to love sincerely, aware at all times that every day in front of her may be the last in which she will be with the one she loves more than anything…

“The Fault in Our Stars” is an emotional story told in a wonderful way that will touch everyone who will come to its last page; and although it may be objected in some moments it's a bit unrealistic in terms of thinking, speech and behavior of young people in those age, the overall impression of Green’s novel is that this is an smart, convincing and realistic work that everyone should read.

The end of the novel is very emotional and do not be surprised if you are like many readers worldwide wipe away the tears because no matter as much as we are taught that fairy tales do not happen in everyday life, Hazel and Augustus in a short time that they spent together wrote one.

John Green wrote a novel that once you’ll read it will become the standard by which to measure how much you’re touched by some novel, and it’s difficult to give a better recommendation.